there's ample evidence of homosexuality among many species of mammal...

Examples don't all fall into the same category - which ones do you have in mind?

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'it must be to do with parenting' thing is just silly.

Too dismissive... the influence of parenting on a person's behaviour is well established.

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Unless you subscribe to the fanciful theory that people are somehow exempt from being animals.

Too simplistic - there are similarities and differences between species. Whereas animal behaviour is always natural in the sense that it's essentially instinctive human behaviour may be natural or unnatural because it is and should be influenced by morality.

Great! Some constructive discussion ensues. I’m sorry i couldn’t reply yesterday, my 4-hour trek through the snow for vegetables left me too knackered to get into it.

Originally Posted By: keymaker

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there's ample evidence of homosexuality among many species of mammal...

Examples don't all fall into the same category - which ones do you have in mind?

We'll get to that later...

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'it must be to do with parenting' thing is just silly.

Too dismissive... the influence of parenting on a person's behaviour is well established.

Obviously, I was dismissing that as the sole explanation for homosexuality.

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Unless you subscribe to the fanciful theory that people are somehow exempt from being animals.

Too simplistic - there are similarities and differences between species. Whereas animal behaviour is always natural in the sense that it's essentially instinctive human behaviour may be natural or unnatural because it is and should be influenced by morality.

I’m very interested that you brought up the subject of morality here, because it seems to be at the core of this and many other discussions on the subject of homosexuality in this forum. The problem as I see it is that morality is to a great extent a matter of convention which varies from society to society, from subculture to subculture, from religion to religion, from person to person.

Many people have been brought up to believe that the world was created by a god who has incontrovertible things to say about something this god calls ‘good’ and ‘evil’. And many of those not explicitly brought up to believe in this have been brought up in societies whose laws were composed by people who did and do believe in those things. Largely, what is considered moral/immoral is a function of what is considered moral/immoral according to these religious beliefs.

Now: for someone who holds to this particular convention of morality:

a) it is considered immoral to act on homosexual desire, and alsob) it is considered immoral not to make the statement (a)

There are many other standards of morality available to us in this world. The one to which I adhere, for example, holds it to be:

a) immoral to do harm to living beingsb) moral to contribute to the happiness of living beings

Within this ethical framework, in a discussion of morality, homosexuality per se is completely irrelevant. One might consider the morality of sex in general, in the context of whether one is doing harm - causing physical or emotional suffering, exploiting another for one’s own gain, being dishonest in order to get what one wants, the general selfishness that sexual desire tends to stimulate, and just the fact that sex tends to stimulate craving, which causes suffering for the craver (who longs for what they don’t have, and fears to lose what they do have). The genders of the people engaging in sex have no moral relevance here at all.

I would not be so bold as to assume that you hold to the view that sexual orientation is in any way a moral issue, though the fact that you brought up morality in a discussion of humans and homosexuality implies to me that you do hold this view.

If that were the case, I could see why it is difficult for us to make sense of each other’s views. Our respective morality apps would be installed under different Belief Systems (BS), and the cross-platform compatibility is quite poor. We could exchange files, but there’s no guarantee of each other’s files being rendered faithfully in the other’s BS, even using the same fonts (my version of BT Baptismal, for example, does not have the same high ascenders).

It is as impossible for me to imagine seeing homosexual activity as having inherently moral consequences as it is for somone with the other BS to imagine this not being so.

Which brings me to the humans/animals issue. Both humans and other animals engage to some extent in homosexual activity. To consider there to be a moral difference between humans and other animals with regard to homosexual activity requires a belief in a moral significance to homosexual activity per se as compared to heterosexual activity.

Given that animals do not have parent issues in the same way that humans do, it makes no sense to cite parent issues as 'the cause' of homosexuality - unless one believes in a moral significance to homosexual activity, in which case one would also necessarily be unable to consider objectively any purely biological cause that might be posited.

I would not be so bold as to assume that you hold to the view that sexual orientation is in any way a moral issue, though the fact that you brought up morality in a discussion of humans and homosexuality implies to me that you do hold this view.

Well, no, I referenced morality only as a point of difference between man and other species so as to question the reliance you placed upon similarities of behaviour. I completely agree with your suggestion that the moral acceptability of an activity should be defined with reference to harm - either to others or to oneself so that cannibalism for example could be deemed to be acceptable in animals but unacceptable in man. The question whether homosexuality can be harmful in some way that heterosexuality is not I would say is unresolved. What I thought was interesting about what Dr Hanner had to say however was that her explanation removed any question of blame in that the primary influences take place in infancy in a manner over which the individual has not control.

The question whether homosexuality can be harmful in some way that heterosexuality is not I would say is unresolved.

It has left me pretty sad, reading that.

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What I thought was interesting about what Dr Hanner had to say however was that her explanation removed any question of blame in that the primary influences take place in infancy in a manner over which the individual has not control

...and that leaves me with a feeling of sad bafflement - "Hey, it's alright, you're off the hook! There's this woman on the internet who reckons you're not to blame for being left-handed/over 6 foot tall..."

The question whether homosexuality can be harmful in some way that heterosexuality is not I would say is unresolved.

It has left me pretty sad, reading that.

Sad? The existence or otherwise of harm is only a factual question.

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Originally Posted By: keymaker

What I thought was interesting about what Dr Hanner had to say however was that her explanation removed any question of blame in that the primary influences take place in infancy in a manner over which the individual has not control

...and that leaves me with a feeling of sad bafflement - "Hey, it's alright, you're off the hook! There's this woman on the internet who reckons you're not to blame for being left-handed/over 6 foot tall..."

Hook? There isn't a hook... it's more like "there's this Doctor of Psychology who works as a therapist for persons seeking help."

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